This invention relates to apparatus for sorting trees. More particularly, this invention relates to the sorting of trees in a forest immediately after the trees have been cut down, or immediately after they have been cut down, limbed and, optionally, topped, using a vehicle provided with multiple dumping bunks each for receiving trees of different types or of different sizes.
After trees have been harvested, and before they are put to their final use as lumber or pulpwood, for example, it is necessary to sort the trees. The sorting operation may be simply to separate trees destined for lumber from those which are destined for papermaking. The sorting operation also may be to separate hardwood from softwood. Also the sorting operation may be to separate the trees into different lengths or different trunk diameters. Alternatively, the sorting operation may be to separate coniferous trees from deciduous trees.
In the past equipment that is capable of being used to sort trees has not been used to permit sorting of the trees at the harvesting site. As a consequence, the tree sorting operation has taken place at other locations where, for various reasons, it has been more difficult to perform than at the harvesting site. For example, various types of trees may be harvested in a forest, limbed, topped and forwarded to a landing site where they may be piled awaiting transportation to a pulp mill or to a lumber mill. The sorting operation may take place at the landing site. The tree trunks will be randomly piled with trunks of different lengths and diameters scattered throughout the pile. In order to sort the pile into trunks of different lengths or trunks of different diameters, the whole pile will have to be disrupted and rearranged. The same is true if the sorting is an operation to separate different species of trees. In that case, however, there may exist the additional problem of identifying the different species. In this respect, identification by the relatively untrained eye of various different species of pines, for example, is much easier when the trees have their pine needles than after the limbs of the trees have been removed.
Thus, in accordance with this invention there is provided apparatus for the sorting of trees at the tree harvesting site when the trees can be most efficiently sorted.